'The Retirement Plan' director Tim Brown took inspiration from the 'John Wick' franchise.

The new movie stars Nicolas Cage as a retired grandfather who longer spends his time killing people for money and Brown says that some of the movie's concepts were inspired by the Keanu Reeves-led series.

Speaking to Collider, Tim said: "The only thing I knew at the beginning was, what if John Wick became a beach bum and an alcoholic, and just did nothing for 40 years? When he's 70, could he have any ability at all? What would that ability be? That was the premise that I started with, and then it evolved.

"So, halfway through the movie, I could not have told you how it was gonna end, remotely. A lot of the people that I've been talking to say the film's unpredictable because I'm not following that classic action genre beat sheet.

"I'm mixing it up a little bit, and where you think the happy ending might happen, I flipped it. If you think this is gonna happen, I wanted to change that, just to be a little bit unpredictable about it."

Brown has penned the script for the flick – which also features Ashley Greene and Ron Perlman - and explained how the story evolved naturally during the writing process.

He explained: "If I knew the ending, that would have been harder to do. I just had to go, 'What if suddenly a van comes crashing through the door? Why would that happen?'

"You just keep asking questions, and then it literally organically evolves. It's almost like a vine. It went in different directions and I just kept writing until I hit 130 pages and figured, 'Well, there's a story.'"